A Dollar for The Ferryman

A Dollar for The Ferryman.

D.W.Mace.

Copyright © D.W.Mace.

Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 9781310802942

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents portrayed in it are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. With the exception of Historical incidents, quotations and personalities, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

Part One. Dancing with The Reaper.

Part Two. Black Sun Rising.

Part Three. Old Sins Cast Long Shadows.

Prologue.

At nine pm on the evening of Tuesday 5th October, 1950; on her way back from the Officer's club on the U.S. Naval air station at Atsugi, Japan... the former Japanese Imperial Navy Kamikaze Air Base, two hours south of Tokyo; Major Charlotte Mckenna, Deputy head of the Translation Department of the resident CIA Joint Technical Advisory Group facility suddenly stopped, and clutched her stomach. She felt an almost audible pop and the sensation that someone had thrown a jug of warm water over her legs. She stared down at the spreading puddle between her feet. Her waters had broken! Fortunately, a shore patrol was passing and rushed her to the base hospital. Charlotte gave birth to a daughter at 3am on the morning of Wednesday, 6th October, 1950.

In accordance with her absent partner, Max Segal... missing somewhere in Korea for almost a year; they had decided that when they had a child... if it was a girl; she would be named Staysha... a Russian version of Anastacia... Max's mother's name. Now, with Max missing somewhere in North Korea, and the child being firmly in the sphere of American influence; although she would indeed be formally christened Staysha, Charlotte decided that the child would be known socially as Stacey, which was more in keeping with the present fashion in names for her daughter's peers.

As she gently cuddled her newly-born daughter, a completely unexpected, disquieting thought suddenly sidled into her mind and precipitated a fleeting shiver of the sort they say you feel when a grey goose flies over your grave. The infant's chosen name... Staysha, was so very similar to that of one of the warrior maids in the ancient volumes that Charlotte; in her previous existence as Fräulein Doktor Karyn von Seringen; archaeologist at the Deutsches Ahnenerbe… the Berlin research institution, whose main goal was to scientifically prove the racial theory and history of the Aryan race and prove that Germans were indeed the Master Race… had painstakingly translated in the Central Science Library of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences at Minsk during her adventures whilst she was involved in Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's Vanavara Protokol, almost thirteen years earlier. It had to be a coincidence... it hadn't struck her as relevant until this moment. It was Max who had suggested the infant's name... should they ever had a girl. There was no way he could be certain that he would indeed, have a daughter, and Charlotte had never spoken to him of specific characters chronicled within the vellum pages of the translated volumes.

She shivered again. It just had to be a coincidence that the warrior maid's name was Staisha... Staisha the Huntress; Lead Rider of The Sisterhood of Lothleitha. It was, however, true that on many occasions and in many different places, Charlotte had been likened to another warrior maid from the pages of the ancient volumes... the warrior maid, Kathalyn Seregon …the one they had called The Golden Child.

Indeed; after the fall of Berlin; before she had become an American Citizen with a completely new identity; Charlotte's true name had been Karyn Helle von Seringen; Graduate Doctor of Archaeology with a chair at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. She had also been an undercover agent for the British SOE whilst in Berlin, and had been recruited, and permanently transferred to the U.S. Office of Strategic Service... the forerunner of the CIA, during the last days of the War in Europe. Her true name was also so very similar to the name of the warrior maid… Kathalyn Seregon. Another coincidence?... or could there possibly be more to it than that?

According to the story... or, as most of the people who knew of the existence of the volumes were concerned…The Legend; both these warrior maids had been inextricably involved in what the scribes of the volumes had described as:

The Eternal Watchtower.

The Mighty, on-going, Punitive War fought between The Forces of The Light and The Forces of The Darkness for the sum of the whole of Creation.

Could there possibly be some truth... however improbable, in this unsettling feeling that she had? On so many occasions in the past, she had encountered what could easily be perceived as The Forces of The Darkness. Her experiences with the Nazis and the Soviet NKVD; her intuitive, on-going quest for the malignant Garnet gemstone known as The Abaddon Stone; and most recently, her experiences in Korea seemed to validate this. She sighed softly, and cuddled her daughter closer. She hoped that this tiny pink scrap in her arms would be part of the first generation within living memory that did not have to go to war; but even as the conflict still raged in Korea, another conflict was taking place in Vietnam between the French Colonialists and the Communist Việt Minh.

Things didn't look too promising. China had begun to provide the North Vietnamese Communists with modern military weapons, and something was brewing in Southeast Asia where the Communist government of North Vietnam was busy promoting revolution among its brothers in the non-Communist south. A major guerrilla war was beginning to develop, and it looked as though the conflict would soon escalate and continue for many years to come.

The infant was sleeping soundly in her arms. Charlotte fervently hoped that her daughter's destiny would lead her far away from any prospect of future conflict. The name similarity had to be coincidence. Japan was a now a safe haven; its society was gentle and empathetic. Little Stacey would grow up in a peaceful environment. Nevertheless, even in her certitude; as Charlotte gazed lovingly at her sleeping daughter, she shivered again.

Part One.

Dancing with The Reaper.

Chapter One.

Friday, 20th September, 1968.

Camp Holloway, Pleiku City.

South Vietnam.

It was just another long, hot, uninspiring day on the chopper pad as Chief Warrant Officer Tim Lockhardt walked up to his Bell UH-1 Huey… call sign Gator four; opened the cockpit door, pulled out the log book; flipped it open, and saw that it was still red-X'd.

There was no point in walking around his bird doing any pre-flight checks. He glanced back at the tail rotor and swore quietly under his breath. Damn! The rotor blade hadn't been replaced. The deep gouge in the tip of the leading edge of the blade had been caused by a flying lump of wood during the emergency dust-off that he had been diverted onto, the previous night at a LZ on a high, open area about twenty klicks east of Pakse.

As if flying into a hot LZ in one of the noisiest ships known to modern warfare wasn't bad enough, the flight home had been particularly rough. He had four wounded grunts in the back; Gator four was taking heavy vibration from the damaged tail rotor blade; and he had to keep full right torque pedal applied to keep her straight. She wouldn't be flying again until a new tail rotor had been fitted. That meant he would have to fly one of the spare hacks until his bird was airworthy. You simply laid down your money and took your chances with one of these tired old ships. The Tet Offensive had been running since January, and had only just ground to a halt after massive losses of Communist troops; but the Vietcong had moved in and were making life difficult out in the Boonies... the surrounding countryside; and flying one of the hacks out into Indian country was not a deal of fun… they had a nasty tendency to develop hydraulics temperature peaking, which could cause a runaway of the semi-rigid, teetering rotor system… and if that hit you; you didn't even get a snowflake's chance in hell of auto-rotating down.

He suddenly felt the familiar eerie sensation in his ears. It was always the same... no matter how many times he had heard it before; an undercurrent in the humid, stagnant air... faintly at first, but getting more distinct by the second. Within a couple of minutes, he could hear it coming; pulsing, throbbing; until he could almost feel the flat, hollow, thump-thumping Whup-whup-whup-whup… Whup-whup-whup-whup of wide rotor blades slapping the humid air, getting louder and louder. Turning around, he spotted the Huey in the sky as a tiny black speck coming in fast and low from the south... from the direction of Saigon.

As he stood and watched; the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) Bell Huey, Charlie model gunship came clattering across the perimeter of Camp Holloway, four klicks due east of Pleiku City on the plateau of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The pilot shot a low approach, lined up, and came to a hover over the spot on the hardstanding designated by the Camp Holloway controller. Whilst still hovering, the gunship turned on its hover axis and proceeded to put down on the edge of the peaceful flight line in a chaotic whirlwind of red dust, next to the row of lightly-armed UH-1Ds and UH-1H Slick troopships... so-called because they were used to lift troops or cargo and were armed only with protective armaments systems; that were parked up alongside the single main runway.

The gunship's rotors began to slow imperceptibly as the turbine wound down; the door slid back, and a canvas valise was tossed out, followed by a pretty, young blonde girl wearing combat fatigues, jungle boots, and a point-forty-four Magnum revolver in a quick-draw holster on her hip; who jumped down out of the Huey's rear cabin.

She picked up the valise, waved to the pilot, turned, and stepped away from the dust cloud kicked up by the rotor wash as a jeep came bouncing across the uneven dirt track that led from the cluster of huts on the south side of the camp, and skidded to a halt beside her. A young Lieutenant jumped out and approached the girl.

'Lieutenant Mckenna? Welcome to the 119th Assault Helicopter Company. The Colonel's waiting for you.'

Stacey Mckenna was just eighteen; petite in stature, blonde and beautiful; with calm, grey-blue eyes; standing only five feet four, and weighing just one hundred and four pounds; but she feared nothing and no-one, and they would soon discover that she could hold her own with any man.

The young Lieutenant tossed her valise into the back of the jeep and climbed back into the driving seat. As the girl climbed into the front passenger seat, the gunship pilot gently pulled up on his collective, increased the revs, and the Huey lifted off in a cloud of dust. He pushed forward on the cyclic, and keeping her straight with the pedals, achieved effective transitional lift, clattering away out over the runway, and banking out in a graceful climbing turn to the left.

Stacey Mckenna clung on grimly to the jeep windshield frame as the young Lieutenant sent the vehicle howling and jolting across the rough trackway that led up to the rudimentary headquarters building... which was just one more wooden hut like all the rest. As it lurched to a halt outside the building, a tall, distinguished-looking man wearing jungle fatigues stepped out from the doorway. The only clue to tell that he held the rank of Full-Bird Colonel were the single silver eagle rank badges pinned to his epaulettes. As Stacey approached, he stepped forward and shook her by the hand.

'Lieutenant Mckenna. Welcome to Camp Holloway. Damn, but you do look like your mother!'

She saluted, and smiled.

'You know my mother, Colonel?'

He nodded.

'Yeah; we met when she was coming out of Berlin in '45. A very brave and resourceful Lady. Do come inside.'

The office was spartan... just a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet. The Colonel invited Stacey to sit, and introduced himself.

'I am Stephen Lounsbury. I was a young Major with Counter Intelligence Corps at Magdeburg in Germany, when I first met your mother. I understand she ended up posted to Korea with The Agency?'

Stacey nodded.

'So she told me. I was born in Japan and brought up there.'

Lounsbury nodded.

'So where is your Mother now?'

'She finished her tour in Korea, and I was told, years ago; that she was on assignment in Berlin... but I haven't heard anything since. She could be almost anywhere.'

'And your father?...'

She shrugged.

'I never knew my father. They say he was lost on special ops in North Korea before I was born.'

Stephen Lounsbury nodded.

'Yeah; Max Segal. Nobody knows what happened, and nothing has ever been found. He might still be alive for all we know.'

She nodded.

'Perhaps.'

Stephen Lounsbury opened a file on his desk and studied the contents. Then he looked up.

'Do you have your log book with you?'

She nodded, and rummaged in her valise. Pulling out a slim book covered in black linen; she slid it across the desk to him. He flipped through a few pages and looked up.

'That's one hell of a log sheet, Lieutenant. Seems you're checked out on a whole bunch of airplanes.'

She nodded.

'Yes, Colonel. I'm type-approved on all the Company's fleet types, except the big Boeing jets.

Stephen Lounsbury whistled.

'Damn! Outstanding! Where did you learn to fly?'

She smiled.

'I've been flying since I was ten and could reach the rudder pedals. Colonel Josie Pullen is a friend of my mother's and introduced me to a Fairchild PT-19 trainer as a tenth birthday gift. When I followed Mom and Dad into the Company, she put me through Advanced Individual Training at the Special Operations Division Air Branch flight training centre at Hsinchu, in Taiwan. Don't worry Colonel; I really am as good as the rest of these guys.'

He smiled.

'OK, Stacey; you want to fly the friendly skies of Southeast Asia? There's a Turbo-Porter out there on the strip; gassed up and ready to go. She's the squadron hack; so you needn't treat her gently. Take her up and let's see how much of this log is bullshit.'

She nodded and unzipped her valise. From it, she pulled a battered old A4 flying jacket... emblazoned with the Wartime WASP's Fifinella patch.... Josie Pullen's old flight jacket. Pulling it on, she smiled at the Colonel; and said:

'My Lucky Mascot… In this climate… Hot… but Lucky!

As she left the office and walked across to where the Turbo-Porter was parked, Stacey noticed a knot of pilots and ground crew gathering to watch this dumb chick screw up. A new Peter pilot... or would it be Peta pilot? This was the stigma worn by all new arrivals… a non-entity to be ignored. She smiled quietly. Josie had said that this was the one down-side to flying with The Company. Under the critical gaze of the assembled crowd, she went through her pre-flight walk-around, and satisfied, climbed into the cockpit. She strapped into the seat harness, put on the headset, and reached across to flick up the ignition, followed by the engine-start switches. With the engine running, she went through the final pre-flight check list and wound on the correct amount of trim for the variable incidence tailplane with the crank handle in the cockpit roof above her head.

She gave the instruments a final scan… everything up and reading normally; released the brakes and taxied out to the runway. And now, for the trick that Josie taught her back at flight school. Pushing the power control lever fully forward, she brought the engine up to full power whilst holding on the brakes; and, with the stick all the way back; she released the brakes and began to roll. At the optimum fifty-six knots indicated, she reached up; wound down eight cranks of take-off flap with the crank fitted next to the tailplane incidence control, and shoved the power control lever through the copper wire at the emergency power end of the quadrant; pulling back on the stick at the same time. The Turbo-Porter went up like a high-speed elevator in the Empire State Building.

At a hundred feet, Stacey retracted flaps and pulled hard back, pushing the stick over into a screaming corkscrew climb-out to eight thousand feet, where she hung on her prop for a few seconds; and executed a tail-slide into a perfect hammer-head turn. She flipped the Porter into a falling leaf tumble for two thousand or so, feet; then pulled out and howled across the runway at zero feet.

Out over the camp perimeter she pulled up into a classically-executed Immelmann turn; and, punching in sixty degrees of bank, side-slipped in, cranked on eleven turns of flap and hit reverse pitch as she touched down. The Turbo-Porter stopped within a little more than one hundred and sixty feet of its wheels first touching the runway. She lifted the power control lever, moved it forward beyond the detent of the quadrant to select normal pitch, and taxied back to the hardstanding. She then went through the shut-down procedure, checked all switches were off and the parking brake was set; unbuckled her harness, pulled off her headset; opened the cockpit door and jumped out.

She was immediately surrounded by onlookers... some smiling, some with disbelief written all over their faces. Stephen Lounsbury pushed his way through and stood; hands on hips in front of her.

'Where in the hell d'you learn to fly like that? You were doing things up there that I didn't know these birds could do! For Pete's sake, you were flying her like she was a Goddamned Helio Courier!'

She smiled.

'I told you I could hack it, Colonel.'

Lounsbury grinned.

'Hack it? That's got to be the Goddamned understatement of the year! If you were one of Uncle Sam's you'd be up for a court-martial for that little show!'

Stacey smiled sweetly.

'But I'm not one of Uncle Sam's. If I was, you'd never have given me the chance to show you.'

The onlookers went quiet as they listened to the conversation. They were looking at this dumb chick in a new light, now. She had to be with The Company. She couldn't be anything else; and for that one reason alone, she deserved their grudging respect.

The Company… Air America, was an American passenger and cargo airline established in 1950 and covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. Operating primarily out of Laos and Thailand, in a war which was so secret that the name of the country was banished from all official communications, and everyone involved simply referred to these operations as being expedited in The Other Theater; Air America missions included everything from food drops to photo reconnaissance, to the delivery and recovery of covert operatives and special-missions teams across national borders. On occasion, they even flew top-secret missions into Burma and the People's Republic of China.

Air America's civilian-marked craft were frequently used, under the control of the Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force, to launch search and rescue missions for U.S. pilots downed throughout Southeast Asia. Air America pilots were the only known private U.S. corporate employees allowed to operate non-Federal Aviation Administration-certified military aircraft in a combat role. Their pilots transported tens of thousands of VIPs, troops and refugees, flew food and weapons to the Hmong tribes that were fighting the communists, and inserted and extracted road watch teams. They flew emergency medevac missions and night-time airdrop missions over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, monitored sensors along infiltration routes; conducted a highly successful photo reconnaissance program, and engaged in numerous clandestine missions using night-vision glasses and state-of-the-art electronic equipment. Without Air America's presence, the CIA's effort in Laos could not possibly have been sustained for any length of time.

Air America also tended to register its aircraft in Taiwan, operating in Laos without the B- nationality prefix. Ex U.S. military aircraft were often used with the last three digits of the serial as a civil marking, sometimes with a B- prefix. But the job was fraught with danger even though the pilots' wages were high. The pay was roughly eight hundred Dollars per month for a co-pilot, and twelve-hundred Dollars for a captain; which was comparable to that of civilian airline pilots, with additional pay for hazardous duty in enemy territory.

The Company pilots of Air America were not regarded as being members of the U.S. Armed Forces, and therefore, had no status under the Geneva Convention. Every man there knew that if that was indeed what this pretty little blonde was; that fact would make not the slightest difference to the Communist Vietnam People's Army, the Viet Cong, or the Laotian Communists if she was ever shot down and captured whilst on a mission. These Gooks played by no accepted rules. They were notorious murderers who would kill anyone who stood in their way. As far as they would be concerned, this pretty girl would be big game to them and would most likely give them hours of fun by being tortured to death if she fell into their hands.

Each Air America pilot was obliged to carry a small pill of lethal Saxitoxin paralytic shellfish toxin, especially created by the CIA, which he had sworn to take if he ever fell into the hands of the enemy. There was no known antidote, and death would occur from respiratory failure… because a quick death was something usually denied to any American who fell into the hands of the Pathet Lao.

The Camp Holloway flyers knew that, even when put up against their perilous occupations of dropping troops into hot zones, the Air America life was the perfect occupation for anyone who enjoyed living on the edge under extreme difficulties and at great personal risk. Anything in the air after dark in The Other Theater was fair game... it was also fair game in daylight... but at least then you might just see it coming in time to take avoiding action.

With the superiority complex of her fellow Company pilots, with regard to fixed-wing airplanes as being their personal property; this pretty little gal would almost certainly be flying a uncamouflaged, civilian, unarmed Huey in some of the most dangerous skies of the entire Indo-Chinese peninsula… a rugged land where few runways were paved and where every Pathet Lao with a rifle of any description… even flintlocks; took pot-shots at every airplane they saw. And, on top of that… she would be facing this without even a door gunner.

Eighteen years earlier; on the morning that Stacey Mckenna was born in the base hospital of U.S. Naval air station, Atsugi, Japan; seven hundred and twenty miles to the north-west, and two miles south of the Imjin River, Private Robbie Sheffler of Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon, 1st Battalion-5th Marine Regiment; 1st Marine Division, was sitting in a shell crater with two of his platoon buddies apathetically eating the contents of the breakfast K ration can... which was the usual, unappetising chopped ham and eggs. The can contained a mushy concoction of scrambled eggs and bits of ham. It tasted reasonably OK when it was heated; but cold like this, it was another matter. The best description of K rations came from Gunny Casey McKee, the Old Man of the platoon; who had once remarked,

They only taste good when you're too fuckin' hungry to care.

Alpha Company was due to move on west towards Kaesŏng from just outside the little settlement of Choksong, and cross the Imjin River to follow the RoK 6th and 8th Divisions up towards the Chŏrwon area, which was known as The Iron Triangle... a key communist Chinese and North Korean concentration area and communications junction in the central sector between Chŏrwon and Kumwha in the south and P'yǒngyang in the north. It would be a hard day's hike to catch up with them.

Time to go. The platoon gathered its weapons and began to move out towards Highway Four; bounded on the north side by extensive paddy fields, and a smelly little stream that the tactical maps identified as the Nullori River, to the south.

Approaching the stream, Robbie Sheffler grimaced at the sight of the large number of skeletal remains scattered about. The big black Korean ants didn't leave much for the other carrion scavengers. He jumped the stream, noticing another skeletal corpse in the slimy water. He glanced again and something caught his eye. The remains had three bullet holes in its skull, and looked as though it had been burned. Flame-thrower?... or perhaps, a white-phosphorus grenade?... but it wasn't the charred skeleton that had attracted his attention.

He paused, and stared down into the depths of the turbid water. There! A flash of reflected light down on the bed of the stream next to the skeletal remains. He knelt on the bank of the steam and reached down into the water. His fingers touched something smooth. Grasping the object, he brought it to the surface. He stared at it... a deep red, pigeon-egg-sized Garnet gemstone.

As he stared; a tiny pinprick of light flickering briefly in the depths of its blood-red heart as it nestled in his hand. There was no way that he could know that this gemstone was, without doubt, the most dangerous thing he would ever encounter. It was in fact, the notorious Abaddon Stone that Stacey's mother; Charlotte had been searching for since 1949.

He tossed it in his hand, grinned, and slipped it into the spare ammo pouch he used to carry his extra goodies. This would be worth a good few bucks when he eventually got the chance to sell it on. The Platoon Leader's voice cut across his thoughts.

'C'mon, let's cut-a-chogy! Two hundred-plus klicks to go, and the Gooks are waiting!'

And Alpha Company picked up the pace as they moved on up north towards the Chosin Valley.

The Fairchild C-123K Provider, twin-engined transport came in on final approach low over the Mekong River, banked over to port, and lined up for the downwind leg of the landing pattern for the single, six thousand feet, concrete runway at Wattay Airport, Vientiane, Laos, four hundred and fifty-five miles to the north-west of Camp Holloway. Her pilot, Vincent… Vinnie Hilliard from Cedar Springs, Michigan, glanced at the pretty young blonde in the copilot's seat. She looked about eighteen. What the hell she was doing in The Other Theatre was a real brain-twister. She had said that she was a pilot on posting to Vientiane. That could mean only one thing… CIA, and Air America; or some other shadowy Spook Central mission.

He had started the day with a mission allocation for hauling a Hard Rice load out of the Royal Thai Air Force Base at Udorn, a Thai provincial capital, fifty miles south of the Laotian border, and the Asian Headquarters for Air America; with a stopover at Vientiane, and then, on up to Long Tieng.

Hard Rice was a euphemism used by the flight crews for missions transporting and air-dropping ammunition and weapons to friendly forces… the indigenous Hmong Guerrilla Units fighting against North Vietnamese Army intruders into Laos, and helping block Hanoi's main military supply route from the north to the south… the Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos, as well as rescuing downed American pilots.

As he sat on the ramp at Peppergrinder… the forward arms depot warehouse at the west end of the runway on the south side of Udorn, run by the Deputy Chief, Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group, Thailand; loading up with a mixed ordnance cargo of ten thousand pounds of bombs and fifty caliber ammunition to re-supply The Royal Laotian Air Force T28 Trojans flying out of Long Tieng; he wished to God that they would shake it. His kicker was swearing volubly in Thai at the loaders to get with it, but seemingly to no avail.

Hilliard sighed. He had just boarded the airplane when the new orders came from AB-1: the CIA station at Udorn. The original mission would have taken just over an hour's flying… there and back; including the stop at Vientiane. From there, it would have been out over Nam Ngum Lake, and eighty miles north-east to Lima Site Twenty Alternate at Long Tieng; marked on the pilotage chart as LS-20A; but now, he was ordered to fly south to Camp Holloway outside Pleiku City in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, and pick up a passenger. That would be nearly four hours flying time. Why the heck they couldn't have flown this guy up to Udorn themselves was almost beyond belief.

He scribbled the calculations on his knee-pad. Eight hundred and seventy-two miles to Camp Holloway and back to Vientiane; eighty miles on to Long Tieng; and the return flight-albeit empty, to Udorn… another one hundred and nineteen miles… a thousand and seventy-one miles.

He shook his head. No can do! The C-123's range was a thousand and thirty-five miles. He would have to refuel at Vientiane. It was lining up to be a long day.

His kicker… his air freight specialist, Danny Brady came up to the flight deck.

'Ok Vinnie, the slopes have finished loading. Let's go!'

Hilliard strapped himself into the left seat and went through his engine start check-list while Danny Brady went back down the ladder into the cargo bay to fire up the auxiliary power unit that supplied two hundred amps at twenty-eight volts, to start the engines. At the fifth pull of the starter cable, the APU coughed and spluttered into life and settled down to its rough clatter. Hilliard pressed number one engine start button. The APU noise changed to a labouring putt-putt sound as the prop on number one began to turn slowly, backfiring through its injection carburettor, and belching out a great, greyish-white cloud of unburnt fuel and oil smoke that had accumulated in the bottom cylinders; which billowed back towards the tail. The big Pratt &Whitney R-2800 radial engine fired up in a noisy cacophony of pounding pistons, whirring flywheels and reduction gears... an ear-splitting, intimidating, thundering sound that rattled the cockpit windows.

Watching the number one engine instrument needles climb into the green segments of the dials as the bellowing, clattering engine settled down to a steady idle, he pressed number two start button. Number two prop began turning slowly; its light-dark-light-dark strobe effect flickering across the instrument panel; then the engine caught, and the prop blades became a blur, as another dense cloud of greyish-white smoke belched from the exhaust stubs and billowed around the tail fin with the Double Wasp eighteen-cylinder radial engine popping and clattering as the excess unburnt fuel and oil cleared. The number two, oil pressure, the oil; cylinder head and exhaust gas temperatures were creeping up into the green… everything was looking OK.

Hilliard pulled on his headset, adjusted the boom mike, and plugged into the intercom system. Danny Brady should have shut down the APU and gone aft to the cargo ramp by now. He keyed the transmit button.

'OK, Danny; time to roll.'

Brady's voice crackled through the headset.

'OK, Boss. Ramp clear. Props clear.'

Hilliard pulled the props lever through the detent into reverse pitch and pushed the throttles forward. The engine clatter increased to a roar, and the C-123 began to slowly reverse back off the ramp, with Brady sitting on the lowered loading ramp with his feet dangling over the edge; calling out steering corrections. His voice crackled in Hilliard's headset.

'OK Boss; I'm off the ramp. The gear pins are in. The cargo is netted down. Let's close up and rock and roll!'

Hilliard grinned. When heavily loaded, it was standard procedure to leave the main-gear locking pins in until after takeoff and then pull them; and reinstall them after putting the gear down for landing.

'OK Danny. Come on up. I'll need you to hit the jet switches with this payload we're hauling.'

The airplane was fitted with two, pod-mounted General Electric turbojets on pylons inboard of the two auxiliary drop tanks. They developed an extra two thousand, eight hundred and fifty pounds feet of thrust, which, although having little effect in increasing the speed, added greater power for quicker climbing on takeoff, and power for maintaining altitude.

With Danny Brady strapped into the right seat, Hilliard increased the engine revs and, with brakes squealing as he turned; trundled out to the active runway. At the threshold, he hit the rear loading ramp lever, and the whine of the hydraulic jacks closing the gaping hole at the back of the airplane echoed through the fuselage. OK; point of no return. Close the loading ramp… accept the cargo; that was the deal.

Lining up on the centre line of the ten thousand foot concrete runway, he set the altimeter, changed radio frequency; keyed his mike switch, and contacted the tower.

'Bookie two-five, VTUD Tower. Request departure information and permission to take-off.'

The tower controller's voice crackled in his headset.

'VTUD Tower, Bookie two-five. Wind one-eight-zero at one-zero, Departure runway One-Two, QNH 1015, QFE 577. Temperature plus five, Dew point minus two. Cleared for takeoff. Turn left heading one-three-zero; Climb and maintain four thousand.'

Hilliard keyed his mike again.

'Bookie two-five. Roger.'

He advanced the power of the two big Pratt and Whitney R-2800 radial engines to take-off power settings and started to roll down the runway. Shoving the throttle levers all the way forward; he held them there as the airplane began to accelerate. As the airspeed indicator needle climbed around the dial, Danny flicked up the two switches, and the thin whine of the turbojets spooling up penetrated the bellow of the engines. Hilliard wound out nineteen degrees of flap and nine degrees of trim; and, as the airspeed indicator needle reached seventy knots, he nodded. Danny reached down to the base of the throttle quadrant and flipped up the two silver, spring-loaded jet thrust output toggle switches.

The mounting howl of the idling J-85 turbojets turned into a deafening roar, and the airplane leapt forward as they ran up to full power with Danny holding the toggles in the up position for about six seconds as a precaution on take-off. He scanned the instruments and spoke into his mike.

'OK, Vinnie. All green… Two turnin' and two burnin!'

Hilliard pulled back on the control column, the nose came up, and the main wheels lifted off the pavement. A little right aileron and rudder, and she rolled up into a fifty degree bank and climbed out of Udorn at an indicated twelve-hundred feet-per-minute. As she climbed out through two thousand feet, the rev counter needles were approaching one hundred and thirty knots… close to type certificate limits for flaps out and gear down.

Hilliard glanced at Danny.

'Flaps zero.'

Danny eased off the flap lever and the hydraulic noises as the actuators began to close the flaps penetrated the din of the engines and turbojets. The thin noise peaked, and then diminished slowly as flaps closed. The hydraulic whine stopped and the aircraft nose lifted slightly as the airspeed needle continued to climb around the dial.

Nursing the control column, Hilliard called out,

'Kill the jets!'

'Jets shut down. Roger!'

Repeated Danny, and flicked the toggle switches down. The high-pitched whine of the turbojets, piercingly audible amid the noise of the big radial engines tapered off quickly as Hilliard pulled the condition levers back together to the flight idle detent. He paused for thirty seconds to let the jets spool down and cool down a little, then brought the levers all the way back to the cut-off position. The nose came back down some as the jets' considerable thrust vanished. There wasn't much reduction in sound and vibration however; as the Pratt & Whitney's bellowed their climb-out song at twenty inches indicated manifold pressure.

Danny unbuckled and went back down into the hold to withdraw the gear pins whilst Hilliard pulled the mixture levers back slightly, to start the fuel mixture leaning-out procedure. He would have to continue this, little by little until the airplane was level at twelve thousand feet and up to her normal cruise speed of one hundred and sixty-eight knots. He would need to be careful about leaning the mixture out. He needed the power, but couldn't leave the engines full rich all the way up. Too lean too soon and the engines would suffer, perhaps even fail, if he wasn't precise with this. The oil pressures and the oil, cylinder head, and exhaust gas temperatures were all in the green. The engine cowl flaps were only half-open now. The autopilot was engaged and was using almost all the nose-up trim at this weight, speed, and rate of climb. He continued to monitor the climb. There wasn't much to do, except to ease the mixture levers back every half-minute or so.

Danny returned to the cockpit and tapped Hilliard on the shoulder. He gave the OK sign with his thumb and forefinger, meaning that the gear pins were out and Hilliard could retract the wheels. Hilliard nodded and pulled the lever. The glowing green gear lamps changed to red, then extinguished, indicating the wheels were retracted and the gear doors were closed. Danny strapped himself into the right seat and plugged in his headset.

'OK. What's the deal Vinnie? I thought we were heading up-country to drop this shit off to the zipper-heads at Long Tieng.'

Hilliard glanced at him, and eased the mixture levers back a little more. They were just coming up to ten thousand feet, and the engines were settling to cruise revs; the nose was coming down, the airspeed was coming up nicely. He eased back a little on the throttles as the speed increased, and tickled the prop levers back to bring the prop speed down to a more economical eighteen-hundred and fifty revs per minute. As she settled into cruise flight, he keyed the mike switch.

'We're heading for Camp Holloway to pick up some guy and run him up to Vientiane.'

Danny stared at him.

'Camp Holloway? That's a Goddamned chopper staging area. The strip is only about thirty-six-hundred feet… and its pierced steel planking. We gonna make it in one piece in this fat old bird?'

Hilliard nodded.

'No sweat. We're close to the fifty-four-thousand pounds maximum landing weight; but if the tires hold; with reverse pitch, she'll stop in twelve hundred feet. We'll be lighter because of the gas we burn on the flight down there, so, with the jets, we should get off again in about eighteen-hundred feet.'

Danny looked askance.

'Looks like they've sold us a top-dollar shit sandwich and we're gonna have to take a big bite of it!'

Hilliard grinned.

'You’ve got no sense of adventure, Danny boy!

Brady snorted.

'Fuck you, you mad bastard. See Vietnam and get spread all over the fucking scenery at no extra cost! All we need now is a Golden-fucking-BB up our ass!'

Hilliard grinned again.

'Yeah! Like some Gook farmer is going to take us out with some Goddamned flintlock at twelve thousand feet?'

Danny glowered and theatrically crossed himself.

'Don't even joke about it. I don't want to go the same way as Hoss Daley. They figure his ship caught the Golden BB somewhere out over the Ho Chi Minh trail. The dust-offs never found a thing under that triple canopy shit… not even a sniff of wreckage.'

Hilliard glanced at his young kicker.

'Gee, you really are a cheerful bastard this morning, Danny. You think too much. Just relax and enjoy the ride. We'll be hitting the Laotian border in about twenty minute; then it's a hundred and forty miles across southern Laos to the Vietnamese border. That section is where we'll need to keep a good altitude.'

Danny snorted.

'Two hundred and twenty-five klicks of chewin' shit sandwich. Thanks a lot, Vinnie!'

Chapter Two.

Vinnie Hilliard gently banked the C-123 round to port as he skirted the southern sprawl of Pleiku city and lined up with the single 05/23 landing strip of Camp Holloway. Danny Brady was already in the cargo bay with the access panels open; ready to slip the locking pins into place when Hilliard lowered the landing gear. Even through his headset earpieces, he heard the hiss and whine of the hydraulics as Hilliard lowered the gear and hauled out forty-five degrees of landing flap. Brady flipped up the inspection panel for the port main gear, checked that the rams were fully extended, and the pin holes were aligned, and then pushed the one-inch-diameter, hardened steel pin home. He then moved across the cargo bay and repeated the procedure on the starboard main gear. Plugging into the intercom system and flicking his mike switch, he reported to Hilliard that the pins were located and the gear was locked. The deafening bellow of the engines diminished slightly as Hilliard throttled back and applied a little fine pitch to the howling props. The airplane lurched and jolted slightly as she began her descent through the hot, clammy air spiralling up from the labyrinth of waterways threading through the pastures off the south-eastern end of the airstrip.

In the ATC tower at Camp Holloway, Senior Airman Nathan Melucci's headset suddenly came alive.

'Bookie two-five, VVPK Tower. Request Permission to land. Over.'

Melucci glanced out of the tower windows towards the 05 end of the steel runway. Yes, There!... about three klicks out. It was a high-wing twin... a big bastard... a C-123!... Fuck! He'd expected the pick-up ship to be a Porter, or perhaps, one of the old Helio Couriers. The dumb fucks at Udorn knew that the runway at Camp Holloway was short. He grabbed at the wall and hit the red crash alarm button. It paid to be prepared for the worst. If this guy blew a tire on landing, this big ship could easily swerve off the planking and pile into the Hueys parked up on the pad alongside the runway. As the alarm klaxons brayed out across the camp, he turned, and nervously watched the approaching C-123, now fully committed onto finals. He quickly contacted the approaching airplane.

'VVPK Tower, Bookie two-five. Enter base runway Zero-fiver. Over.'

The terse reply crackled in his headset.

That's a Rog, VVPK Tower. Runway Zero-fiver. Committing now. Stand By.

In the cockpit, Hilliard had the turbojets spooled up and idling in case he needed to abort the landing, and was easing her down gently onto an imaginary centre-line of the runway. Danny Brady had taken the right seat again and was gripping the armrests of his seat in white-knuckled anticipation of what was about to happen. Shit! The ground was coming up fast!

The controller's voice came again.

Bookie two-five. Cleared to land runway Zero-fiver. Over.

'Roger.'

Hilliard was concentrating hard. Airspeed... down to one hundred and thirty knots. Rate of descent… steady. Attitude?… the indicator bar on the artificial horizon was dead steady, slightly below the centre line. Everything else was OK in the green. His hand was on the reverse props lever as the C-123 swept in low over the clear ground at the 05 end of the runway threshold. He pulled back a little on the control column to get the nose up into a couple of degrees of flare, and felt, and heard the thud and squeal as the main gear touched the steel planking exactly on the first set of the eight white bars painted longitudinally on the pierced steel planking at the threshold of the runway.

Hilliard banged the props lever through the detent into reverse pitch and rammed the throttle levers forward as the nose came down. The nose gear touched after a few seconds and he could finally get a good view of the runway ahead. He was a little to the right and still drifting that way. Left rudder… airspeed… a hundred and five; rolling too fast for the brakes, too damn close to the right edge of the runway. The right main gear had to be very close to going off, and the nose wheel had lifted again. The rudder began to take effect and the nose started to move left, towards the centre of the runway, slowing, but still too fast. More power! He shoved the throttles all the way forward and the reversed props began to really bite into the clammy air; the clatter of the Pratt & Whitney's increased to a roar as dust billowed forward down the runway. Yeah, that was working. The ASI was dropping through ninety-five knots. At ninety knots, Hilliard hit the rudder pedal brakes, and the airplane squirmed and shimmied as the tires fought for braking grip on the greasy steel surface. The nose-wheel came down again with a bump, and, with engines bleating and brakes squealing, Hilliard brought her to a standstill about two-thirds of the way down the runway.

Glancing ahead, he noted that the runway rose slightly at the 23 end, and there was clear, flat land ahead... there needed to be for the resident choppers to attain effective transitional lift... the nose-down take-off attitude that eventually afforded them sufficient lift to attain altitude. Obstructions at the end of the runway would not be a good idea!

Again, his headset crackled.

Bookie two-five. Backtrack to Zero-fiver threshold. Over.

'Roger.'

Turning the C-123, he taxied back up the runway to the 05 threshold; turned again, and stopped.

Danny stared at him.

'Why this end? You figuring to take off downwind, you crazy sonofabitch?'

Hilliard glanced at him.

'Sure do. You think I'm going to haul ass out over Pleiku city when I've got twenty klicks of flat at the other end of the strip? No chance, Danny boy. Now, go and get the side door open for our passenger.'

Danny nodded and disappeared down the steps at the rear of the flight deck. Hilliard watched the instruments. He had no intention of shutting down... the least time spent here, the better; but he didn't want her to oil her plugs on idle for too long. As it was, he didn't have to wait for more than a few minutes. A jeep came howling and bouncing across from the hut area, and slid to a standstill far enough away from the whirling port prop to be safe. Danny waited by the forward port door as a slim figure approached. It was a girl! She carried a canvas valise and wore combat fatigues, jungle boots; and a point-forty-four magnum on her hip. She was slender, blonde, and beautiful. His mouth dropped open in complete surprise. She smiled.

'So, you're my ride to Vientiane? I was expecting a Porter.'

Danny found his voice.

'Yep, we're your ride, baby.'

She smiled again.

'Actually, it's Lieutenant Baby… or, Agent Baby… or, just plain Stacey!'

Danny blushed.

'Sorry, Ma'am. We thought you'd be a guy. Seeing you was a bit of a shock.'

She smiled again.

'That's OK.'

He stood back as she climbed into the airplane. The cargo bay was basically a big square box with webbing benches running along the inside walls. At the front there was wall about ten feet high with three, deep, box-ladder steps up to the flight deck. The centre of the area contained the payload of weapons and ammunition held down with webbing nets that clipped to the floor. Stacey climbed the box-ladder steps as Danny closed the door.

Hilliard turned in his seat as she appeared behind him. His expression was much the same as Danny's. He blurted out the first thing that came into his mind.

'Hell! You mean we had to come all this way to pick up a stenographer, or somethin'?'

She gave him a sweet smile.

'No, Captain. I'm a pilot on posting to Vientiane.'

He stared at her. Disbelief was written all over his face.

'What the Hell? This ain't some kinda flying club, honey!'

She looked at him steadily.

'I am aware of that, Captain. That's why they put me through Advanced Individual Training at the Special Operations Division Air Branch flight training centre at Hsinchu, in Taiwan. I'm type approved on everything the Company flies… except the big Boeing jets… including this Bookie Bird… but my hours were on a Bravo… without the jets.'

Hilliard glanced at her and raised an eyebrow.

'So, you're flying for the Company? Then you must be out of Langley… the real deal? You're too young to be a regular bush pilot.'

She smiled.

'Actually, I'm out from Atsugi. I'm Agent Mckenna… or Stacey to my friends. They also gave me a Military rank, but I try not to